Helping Men Cope With the Death of a Loved One

By: John Moles

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Everyone grieves differently and there’s no right or wrong way to do so. As funeral directors in Bellingham and Ferndale we’re very familiar with this. There’s one major aspect of grief that’s quite interesting that we’ve found true for most of our clients. That is the difference between men and women grieving. It’s likely something you’re not too surprised to hear but it’s the difficulty men have at times that can be a cause for concern.

Time to Mourn

One of the most common things you’ll hear upon losing a loved one is that it will all get better with time. The problem with this for men can be that in the meantime they try to keep busy so that the time when things are better happens sooner. Unfortunately, when they’re not allowing themselves time to think about the passing, the healing isn’t able to begin.

Another reason the healing can be delayed and time for mourning lessened is that men often end up feeling angry initially. When anger is an initial reaction it takes longer to get to feeling sadness and can make it easier to skip it altogether. It’s completely natural to feel anger and there’s nothing wrong with it as long as there’s time spent feeling sadness as well.

Internalizing Grief

Many men don’t feel comfortable showing their sadness and this can often cause grief to be internalized. This builds on the discussion of men feeling anger and instead of moving from anger to sadness the feelings become internalized. When this happens it prevents the process from occurring there can be serious long term problems that arise. Some of these include depression, low self esteem, and health issues including substance abuse.

It also impacts those around you because they have no idea how you’re feeling and will start to make assumptions which may be wrong. As you can see the impacts of grief can be incredible and have much greater effects than you ever imagined. The process is very much normal and as you can see it’s definitely a benefit to go through the entire cycle.

Ways to Cope

One of the most important ways a man can help himself in the grieving process is to share his feelings with someone else. It doesn’t matter who this person is, if he doesn’t feel comfortable talking to someone he knows it could be a professional. The main thing is that there’s a chance to be open and honest to help work through the feelings and eventually get to a place of acceptance.

In the end we want you to know it’s okay to be different in the grieving process as long as you’re taking the time to go through it. To many people we may just be funeral directors in Bellingham and Ferndale but, we can often be the person who many will open up to. We’re always here for our clients and want to ensure the best possible experience and help in any way we can.